Robert “Bo” Woods left his financial planner’s office with a huge smile on his face. Chris Brown just showed him that he had plenty of investments and income to retire and live the high life. Bo was only forty-five.
Bo always marched to the beat of a different drum. While he starred in football and baseball, he was not one of the “kool kids” in high school. He never dressed in trendy clothes, preferring tie-dye shirts, Levi’s, and Birkenstocks. He wore several beaded bracelets and necklaces as well. Bo excelled in school earning a 4.26 GPA while scoring extremely high on the SAT test. For his efforts, he earned an academic scholarship to Stanford.
Bo’s parents, both high school teachers, were tail-end hippies having been born in 1955. He was raised in a bohemian household with few rules, to question authority, creativity was encouraged, and where music was preferred over tv. During the summers the family would travel the west coast to see Grateful Dead concerts. Bo went to his first show when he was eleven months old. That all ended when frontman Jerry Garcia died in the summer of 1995. Bo was seventeen and had been to over fifty Dead shows.
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His first job out of Stanford was with a startup company in Palo Alto. It was July 2000, and he was employee number nine. Ghost Technologies was a software firm and Bo was hired as its Controller, reporting to the CFO. The salary was lower than usual for the first few years, but company stock was awarded each year as a bonus based on profits and tenure. This was how he built his wealth, along with a few great stock picks. Bo watched trends and kept up on the Silicon Valley tech news and rumors, allowing him to correctly predict that Apple, Amazon, and Nike would be solid investments.
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When Chris Brown showed Bo his financials in February 2023, he knew the time was right to retire. His two kids were almost done with college, and he craved change. His wife died eight years ago from cancer, and he had only been on four dates. He told Chris, “It’s time I did something for myself. It’s time to move on.”
A few weeks later he read online about the upcoming Dead and Company summer tour. This group was made up of half of the old band, and he had been to several shows in the Bay Area over the years. It was then that he had the idea to buy a small motor home and follow the band around this summer as they’d be playing in cities all over the nation. As a kid, his family had an old motor home for their adventures to Dead shows. He reasoned it would be a great way to see America.
After some deep research and visiting several RV dealers, Bo settled on a large-sized van. He read about the “van life” phenomenon and looked at tons of photos on the web. He selected a company across the bay in Oakland that would build his custom van.
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Bo left Palo Alto on May 18th and drove to LA for the first show at the Inglewood Forum the next evening. He’d park the van overnight at a variety of places during his trip: RV parks, truck stops, Walmart parking lots, and when allowed, venue parking lots. `
The band’s tour was making a logical path, traveling east from LA along the southern states, heading north along the east coast before turning west into the Midwest. During the first six weeks, Bo had been to over twenty concerts in sixteen cities.
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Bo was excited to arrive in Boulder, Colorado for three shows in early July. He was in the home stretch of the tour with only sixteen days remaining. On the first day, he arrived early and lined up to get into the parking lot and get a prime spot. Dead Heads would create a “Shakedown Street” of food and other merchants in honor of one of the bands’ popular songs. Many fans wandered through the parking lot partying, reconnecting with friends, buying drugs, and looking for casual sex.
Bo had a few hookups along the tour, after all, he was a good-looking guy. He was six-foot tall, with shoulder-length light brown hair, blue eyes, a short beard, and an athletic build.
After setting up his camp for the next few days, Bo sat in a chair and was people-watching, reading on his iPad, drinking beer, and taking an occasional hit off a joint. After greeting others for hours, he was approached by two younger girls with large hiking backpacks. They saw his California license plate and said they were from the Bay Area. He told them he currently lived in Palo Alto but grew up in Santa Cruz.
He learned their names were Summer and Nevaeh (heaven backwards), or “Nev,” and they were also from the beach town Santa Cruz. They then exchanged last names. The girls looked at each other.
“Are you related to Mister and Misses Woods, the high school teachers?” Summer asked.
Bo smiled, “Yes, they’re my parents.”
That broke the ice. Bo dug out more chairs, gave the girls beers, and they passed a joint around. As they talked, he learned the girls were twenty-four, and recently graduated from Chico State with degrees in nursing. They start their first job at Stanford Medical Center on August 1st. Ironically, the three new friends all grew up in the University Heights neighborhood.
This was their first show of the tour, and they said they had tickets for most of the remaining eight shows in three cities. They flew to Denver and took a transit bus to Boulder, but they had no clue where they were staying or how they were getting to The Gorge in remote Washington, the next tour stop. The girls told Bo his dad introduced them to the Grateful Dead as he was always playing music in his art classroom.
